Hiro Draws Attention to First Principles

Scholar Dilip Hiro has come forward with an interesting article on why Obama's approach to Iran is unlikely to bring about the changes that the U.S. wants to achieve. His argument is that the Obama Administration, like its predecessor, has based its approach to Iran on a faulty assumption that:

Whatever the White House perceives as a threat -- whether it be Iran, North Korea, or the proliferation of long-range missiles -- must be viewed as such by Moscow and Beijing.

He then proceeds to demonstrate why this assumption, however appealing in theory, is simply not the case, citing steps taken by the Chinese to cushion the blow of any new sanctions by replenishing gasoline supplies and increasing oil exports from Iran to China. As for Russia, Hiro suggests that Moscow is far more concerned with loose nukes in Pakistan falling into the hands of terrorists than it is about a future Iranian breakout capability. One can take issue with his characterization of the Iranian threat as "theoretical," but he does make a good case for why, from Russia's point of view, it is not altogether clear why they should accept the hypothesis that an Iranian nuclear bomb poses any kind of immediate threat to them.

These are important distinctions. And they indeed fly in the face of the Administration’s approach to dealing with not just Iran but also with North Korea, the security of nuclear material and sensitive technologies, and nonproliferation writ-large. Earlier this week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at USIP about the administration’s efforts to honor and uphold the core bargains at the heart of the NPT.

[These efforts] must start from the premise that the nuclear threat is a danger that all nations face together, and that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons is not just in the interests of the existing nuclear weapon states, as it is sometimes asserted. Indeed, the nonnuclear weapon states have as much or more to lose if these weapons spread or are ever used again. The same logic applies to our work to combat the threat of nuclear terrorism. A nuclear terrorist bomb detonated anywhere in the world would have vast economic, political, ecological and social consequences everywhere in the world.

Following Hiro’s reasoning, the first premise that the threat is one that "all nations face together" is only partly true. Yes, any kind of nuclear attack would likely create far-reaching repercussions affecting many, if not all, states. However, it should not be presumed that all states will feel these repercussions in the same ways and to the same extent; they will not. Furthermore, the assertion that the "same logic applies" to efforts to curb nuclear terrorism begins to fall apart by lumping together the problems posed by North Korea and (potentially) Iran, which represent large political issues that need to be sorted out among states diplomatically through negotiated frameworks, with the issue of nuclear terrorism, which entails an intensive effort among and within states to secure materials, enforce export controls, and participate in the pursuit and capture of extremists. More to the point, it again presumes that all states - not just similarly powerful states like China and Russia - share our perception of the threat and the consequences.

Hillary Clinton is absolutely right that nonproliferation is not a passive exercise and deserves a great deal of credit for saying so. However, if nonproliferation is indeed a participatory project, then would be a little hasty to presuppose that all states will feel equally and similarly motivated to participate. Other large, militarily powerful P5 states with a strong interest in preventing radical shakeups to the status quo don't share our perceptions, as Hiro points out, and it is a virtual certainty that there is a much wider range of motivations among the many non-nuclear states. Hence the trouble with 1540 implementation.

One reason why these distinctions are lost might have something to do with the language. "Proliferation" is often used to connote a "trend," "wave" or "cascade." But it also is used to describe discrete cases - such as Iran and North Korea - that are unique. Proliferation-as-trend is a useful heuristic most of the time, but it can also result in carelessly glossing over the details of each particular case. Hiro's account of the "painful legacy of animosity and ill-feeling" beginning with the CIA-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953 and continuing on to current allegations that the U.S. is spending money on destabilizing the regime, doesn't claim to be comprehensive, but it is telling. He continues,

"It is unrealistic to expect that a regime which fought Saddam Hussein's Iraq (then backed by the United States) to a standstill in a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s, unaided by any foreign power, and has for 30 years withstood the consequences of U.S.-imposed economic sanctions will be alarmed by Washington's fresh threats of "crippling sanctions."

Hiro does not therefore suggest that we need to resort to military options to deal with Iran. In-fact, he doesn't say exactly what we should do beyond changing our assumptions about the interest of China and Russia in making a sanctions regime serve U.S. policy objectives, though he does suggest that a guarantee to not attack Iran would help. Although taking options off the table is anathema to some in the U.S., it's worth noting that withdrawing from the NPT (justifiably or not) and building a nuke remains an option on Iran's table - a ridiculously bad option (though arguably not more ridiculous than the 2008 election season hypothesizing about stopping Iran's nuclear program with a nuclear weapon of our own) but an option nonetheless.

So how do we incentivize Iran to cooperate fully with the IAEA and pursue a more agreeable track with respect to its nuclear program? There are no definitive answers out there. However, two fairly complementary talks given earlier this week at the fall conference (if readers will forgive the plug) offered a few key insights. One was that sanctions tend to work better when the overall relations between the sanctioner and sanctionee are better; otherwise, they are more easily dismissed as indirect attacks by a hostile foe, not a "sanction" for violating an agreed upon rule proven by objectively weighed criteria for determining guilt. As far as Iran is concerned, it is apparent that the difference between the two has been muddled by all the rhetoric, so we'll need to either get back to square one or better (which is unlikely) just to make sanctions work, or try another tack.

The other insight was that we need to be wary about equating the offer of positive incentives to appeasement, weakness, or succumbing to extortion by rogues. The definition of "positive" is salient in this context, as oftentimes offering carrots is reduced to withholding the beat of the stick. The two are not necessarily the same.

There's a good debate to be had about whether or not the Administration can or should even try to play this nice in the sandbox. Iran has absolutely no excuse for the vitriol of Ahmadinejad or its failure to live up to its reporting requirements under the NPT. Nonetheless, if Hiro is correct, then we have a long way to go in aligning Russian and Chinese interests with our own before we can expect that sanctions will deliver the result we want.